Washing of reusable flatware in mass feeding establishments generally entails the placing of the flatware in a presoak liquid such as water to soften any food particles which may be encrusted thereon. Subsequently the flatware is manually removed from the presoaking vessel and placed in bunches in perforated containers. The containers are then loaded into a dish washing machine for movement through washing and rinsing stations. It is not uncommon for similar items of flatware to nest together or the pieces of flatware otherwise to shield one another from the washing and rinsing sprays thereby to interfere with the proper washing and sanitizing of the flatware. After processing, the flatware containers are removed from the dishwashing machine and the common practice is to manually sort the washed and sanitized flatware into categories of like items.
Aside from sanitary considerations, the repeated handling of the flatware is costly. In a typical installation the flatware is normally handled five or six times in the soaking, washing and sorting processes. Consequently, it would be desirable to reduce the manual handling of the flatware and to eliminate all manual sorting thereof after the washing operation. In this manner the sanitation will be greatly improved because of the reduced handling, and a considerable savings in labor and overall cost will be achieved.
In mass feeding establishments flatware is ordinarilly washed in automatic commercial dishwashers designed to wash dishes and drinking glasses as well as large trays and the like. Commercial dishwashers, designed to wash breakable dishes and drinking glasses as well as large trays and the like, must of necessity employ moderate spray pressures to minimize breakage and have upper spray orifices highly spaced apart from smaller items, such as flatware, resulting in reduced spray pressure at the point of spray contact with such smaller items. Accordingly, because of the many crevices usually found in flatware shapes and the tendency of food particles to tenaciously adhere to flatware, the cleanliness of the washed flatware frequently leaves much to be desired. It would be desirable therefore, to provide an automatic washing machine particularly designed for cleaning and sanitizing flatware by insuring that high velocity sprays of the washing and rinsing liquids directly impinge on all the areas of the flatware where food items most commonly adhere.